They were to be issued in ascertained proportions on the funds of the several states, with a collateral security on the part of the government, to pay the quota of any particular state, which the events of the war might render incapable of complying with its own engagements.

The bills were to be deposited in the continental loan-offices of the several states, and were to be signed only as the money then in circulation should be brought in by taxes or otherwise.
After being signed, six-tenths of them were to be delivered to the states on whose funds they were to be issued, and the remaining four-tenths to be retained for the use of the continent.
The operation of this scheme of finance was necessarily suspended by the same causes which suspended that for requiring specific articles.
It depended on the sanction and co-operation of the several state legislatures, many of which were yet to convene.
As it would be impracticable to maintain the value of the money about to be emitted, should the states continue to issue bills of credit, they were earnestly requested to suspend future emissions, and to call the current paper out of circulation.

But the time for this measure was not yet arrived, and many of the states continued the use of the press till late in the following year.
The establishment of the army for the ensuing campaign was fixed at thirty-five thousand two hundred and eleven men, and the measures for recruiting it were founded on the state system, which was become entirely predominant.
The few intelligent statesmen who could combine practical good sense with patriotism, perceived the dangerous inefficacy of a system which openly abandoned the national character, and proceeded on the principle that the American confederacy was no more than an alliance of independent nations.
That great delays would be experienced, that the different parts of the plan would be acted on too unequally and too uncertainly to furnish a solid basis for military calculations, that the system would be totally deranged in its execution, were mischiefs foreseen and lamented by many, as resulting inevitably from a course of measures to which the government of the Union was under the painful necessity of submitting.
"Certain I am," said the Commander-in-chief, in a confidential letter to a member of the national legislature, "that unless congress speaks in a more decisive tone; unless they are vested with powers by the several states, competent to the great purposes of the war, or assume them as matter of right, and they and the states respectively act with more energy than they hitherto have done, our cause is lost.

We can no longer drudge on in the old way.

By ill-timing the adoption of measures; by delays in the execution of them, or by unwarrantable jealousies; we incur enormous expenses, and derive no benefit from them.